Matcherino Announces $2.7 Million Series A-1 Financing to Accelerate Esports Tournament Growth and Facilitate Esports Engagement for Major Global Brands

Matcherino, the leading online platform that powers the business of esports by enabling game publishers and tournament organizers to seamlessly manage esports events, and provide global brands with the unique ability to reach and engage with valuable esports audiences, today announced that it has closed a $2.7 million investment round. The financing was led by Seven Peaks Ventures. New investor aXiomatic Gaming also joined this round, and existing investors Madrona Venture Group and Vulcan Capital also participated in the financing.

This investment will fuel the ongoing expansion of the go-to-market and platform development teams, in order to support the global ecosystem of game publishers, tournament organizers and global brands that want to engage with massively expanding esports audiences. Specifically, the capital will enable Matcherino to further develop expanded prize pool management, custom game content commerce and programmatic sponsorship campaign delivery and measurement tools.

Leo Hsu, Director, Strategy at aXiomatic said “aXiomatic’s esports investment strategy targets dynamic companies across the esports ecosystem with potential to enrich player experience or deepen audience engagement. Matcherino’s unique platform ticks both boxes: bringing fan-backed tournaments to life while providing an authentic channel for publishers and sponsors to interact with consumers.”

Goldman Sachs projects that the esports industry will grow to become a $3 billion dollar industry by 2022, and monthly viewership of esports events will exceed 300 million. Given this growth, large global brands are actively exploring how to reach this growing audience that has unique demographics and interests.

Matcherino is the only esports event management platform that enables sponsors to reach esports fans at scale through native placements that drive measured results though targeted messaging and actions for global brands, providing significantly more than just impression-based offerings.

“Major global brands are interested in engaging esports fans but are looking for ways to measure the ROI of their esports expenditures,” said John Maffei, Matcherino CEO. “Matcherino helps brands easily reach and deeply engage with esports audiences across hundreds of tournaments each month and lets these sponsors drive the actions and results they value in a measurable way.”

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Matcherino builds software that enables game publishers and tournament organizers to run successful esports events. The Matcherino platform includes tools to increase tournament prize pools including the ability for fans to buy custom game content from publishers as well as support for sponsors through actionable advertising campaigns. Matcherino also offers financial services including prize pool escrow services and the transparent, documented and tax compliant distribution of tournament prize pools after their completion. Over four thousand tournaments have been powered by the Matcherino platform.